Hey there. I am trying to get into the animation field using 3dsmax6. Anyway my issue is my computer. I have a copy from the school I went to as practice to gain more experience and build a bigger portfolio. Unfortunetly 3dsmax and all animation programs are pretty expensive. Right now I am focusing on saving up to buy a copy for myself but I think it's time I also upgrade my computer. Also so you know the copy I have from school is a legite version. Anyways this is my current computer. Intel Pentium 4 Cpu 1.60Ghz At/At Compatible 1,048,048kb RAM I also have the Gforce 256MB graphics card. The reason I feel I need to upgrade is simply because my computer seems to slow with 3ds. Some examples are: -Reactor-I add reactor to a characters shirt and it will always crash Max. I can get simply objects like making a towel to work just fine but once I get to a skined Char. with using reactor cloth, then it's not soo good. -Rendering-I know no matter what it's still gonna be slow. Rendering is just a tough thing for a home computer to do. But sometimes simple scenes take riduculasly too long. -Hi-res meshes-I feel like I can't make any. My computer can't handle it. More reasons why I think it's time to ipgrade. But before I upgrade I thought i'd get some professional advice first from people who are in the field with a better understanding for what I may need. Also i've been considering getting a Mac instead. Any preferences to PC vs Mac? Also if any Mac recommendations would be appriciated. Anyway, I hope you have enough info to get me pointed in the right direction. Thanks.

What you want is a 64 bit machine. 3ds max is probably one of the first applications to go 64bit. A good 3D machine is going to cost. I prefer PC to Mac, PC offers more choices in CPU and graphics cards. And if you're not living in the US, PCs are also much cheaper - for some reason Apple believes a non-US customer should pay 60%-100% more than a US customer (excluding all kinds of taxes that they don't have any control over). AMD or Intel? AMD has more experience with 64bit consumer market CPUs, and in general give you more bang for your buck. The best CPU price/performance wise will probably be the Athlon64x2 4400+. RAM? As much as you can afford. 1 GB is not enough. Go for at least 2 GB, preferably 4 GB. Graphics card: nVidia Quadro or ATI FireGL. They're pricey, but they're much, much better for 3D applications than the gamer cards (nVidia GeForce, ATI Radeon). Disk systems: you'll want a fast working disk plus a large storage disk. I'd recommend a WD Raptor (36 GB or 73 GB, 10,000 RPM) for a working disk, and a 160 GB 7200 RPM storage disk (doesn't really matter what brand). 160 GB has the best price per GB at the moment. Larger disks are more expensive per GB, and tend to be somewhat less reliable. Don't go for SCSI, you won't get any speed benefits since the PCI bus on the PC (and the Mac) is the bottleneck, you'll only pay way too much for a disk. Another thing about Mac: Apple is going to leave the PowerPC CPUs behind and switch to Intel CPUs. If you're interested in a Mac (by the way, I don't think there's a Mac version of 3DS Max, but I might be wrong here), I'd advise you to wait and see how the new Intel-based Macs are doing.

Raptors are nice I have six of them but my next drive is going to be: http://store.westerndigital.com/product.asp?sku=2643746 that 16mb buffer is very nice and the sata 300 are almost as fast as raptors in many tasks understamding that a smaller plater will always be able to find something unk faster, but the sata 300 drive above is $170 vs $240 is also 250GB vs 74GB, which considering the size of my run time may be a deciding factor. As to the 64 hardware, ALL high end processors support 64bit at this time but the software support is not so great, which has not stopped me from running mandriva 64bit OS, and windows 2003 64 edt and windows xp 64. Though my main rig is windows 2000, as everything currently runs on it. One thing to note is you can upgrade to a x86 type 64bit cpu and still run a 32 bit OS at full speed and when you upgrade your OS to a 64 bit one, your processor will still be able to run 32 bit apps. With mac going to intel cpu's they no longer get the advantage of hard coded instruction sets for adobe stuff. It should be interesting to see ifIntel adds that to their chips. You didn't put what motherboard you have up but I'd guess by the speed of the cpu your running a celeron P4 which is a different socket that a new one which would have you upgrading your motherboard to get a faster CPU. The one things is this: "Gforce 256MB" there was a videocard that used this name I'm hoping you just mean a more modern Gforce with 256MB of ram. Most rendering is done on the cpu not the graphics card unless you have a workstation card such as the "nVidia Quadro or ATI FireGL" above. Depending on your budget where you cut coners changes. so more info is really needed to layout what your are looking at as options...

max is windows only, so don't bother with the mac option for using max. mac with intel isn't a big change actually, for apple. the os that osx is based on had coding for all architectures, they knew they would be switching so they left the coding in place. current osx will run on intel box, if it has a bios that macos will recognise. ( open firmware only )